2023-11-24 18:39:00
Sunamgani District Flood: Climate change is increasing flooding in Bangladesh while making it more unpredictable.
Photo: Mamun Hossain / AFP
Climate change is considered a threat to humanity. However, the threat situation is not the same for everyone. “Those who are least responsible for climate change are also those who are particularly at risk from this crisis,” said Saber Hossain Chowdhury recently at an event on the grounds of Stamford University in Dhaka. The politician’s sentence was the main message of this year’s Climate Justice Assembly in Bangladesh’s capital. It is one of the many regional events before the world climate summit COP28 in Dubai. In Dhaka, civil society activists in particular highlighted the need for stronger action.
Chowdhury was also present as an intermediary. As Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s special envoy on climate protection, he brings country-specific concerns into discussions at the international level. 33 suggestions and demands alone were submitted over the two days of the Climate Justice Assembly. For example, the question of compensation payments for those most affected: “This compensation is not a donation, but the right to which they are entitled,” Lidy Nacpil, the coordinator of the Asian People’s Movement for Debt and Development, was quoted by the newspaper “The Daily Star.” .
As recently as August, massive rains in the southeast of the South Asian country led to widespread flooding. The districts of Chattogram, Cox’s Bazar, Bandarban and Rangamati were particularly affected. While up to 90 percent of the area in Bandarban was under water, in Cox’s Bazar the landslides also threatened the more than a million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar who have been living in huge camps for years. The tents and huts had even less resistance to the forces of nature than permanent houses. A total of 1.2 million people were affected, although the death toll was limited. Many of the survivors no longer have a home to return to. The flood disaster in the middle of last year was even worse, when over four million people were at least temporarily uprooted and many lost their economic existence.
Almost all of the annual precipitation falls in South Asia in the monsoon season from June to September. Floods are not unusual during this period. But extreme rainfall is increasing in intensity and frequency due to climate change. They also encounter an area that is more vulnerable than ever: the sea and the arms of the Ganges and Brahmaputra deltas are constantly eating away at the shorelines. And much of Bangladesh is just a meter above sea level. There are already many internally displaced people as a result of climate change and the number is constantly increasing. The World Bank forecasts that there will be 13 million such uprooted people in this country alone by 2050, which is in line with other estimates.
There are good ideas, but there is a lack of money
A year ago, the Environment and Climate Ministry developed an adaptation plan that sets out a strategy for the period 2023 to 2050. Right at the beginning of the document, which is more than 260 pages long, there is Sheikh Hasina’s statement at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland in 2021, when the Prime Minister recalled a promise that has not been kept to this day: the promise of the industrialized nations to give 100 per year to the poorer countries in the Global South To make billions of US dollars available for the fight against climate change. 50 percent of this should flow into adaptation measures, the other 50 percent into repairing damage. What the ministry put together and expanded in 2022 is based on initial action plans, some of which go back to 2005. A volunteer group of 76,000 people is now available at short notice to immediately begin evacuation and relief measures in the event of flood disasters. This staffing level and existing emergency relief centers are already having an effect in at least reducing the number of deaths. In Bangladesh’s agriculture, plagued by increasing salinization of coastal soils and erosion losses, experiments are being carried out with some success with adapted plant varieties. However, implementing all measures by 2050 would cost around $203 billion.
There is no shortage of clever ideas and innovative projects, “The Daily Star” noted in an article back in February. But there is still a need for the integrative implementation of the plans on a national scale and a change in awareness that affects the whole of society. And ultimately the money. The threats are diverse: the country is currently being hit by one of the worst waves of dengue in its history. The risk of such mosquito-borne diseases spreading is also steadily increasing as climate change progresses. Of the nearly 300,000 people infected with dengue in Bangladesh this year, over 1,400 have died, according to official statistics, a sad new record.
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